An anonymous reader writes: Concerned about the millions of people living without energy and water, 17-year-old student scientist Cynthia Sin Nga Lam developed the H2Pro – a portable photocatalytic electricity generation and water purification unit that produces clean energy and fresh water at the same time. Cynthia explains that while investigating photocatalysis, she stumbled upon the idea of the H2Pro: “In photocatalysis, not only water is purified and sterilized, but hydrogen is also produced through water-splitting, which can be used to generate electricity.”Link to Original Source

itwbennett writes: Japan is one of the last countries in the world where telegrams are still widely used. A combination of traditional manners, market liberalization and innovation has kept alive this age-old form of messaging. Companies affiliated with the country's three mobile carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank, offer telegrams, which are sent via modern server networks instead of the dedicated electrical wires of the past (Morse telegraphy hasn't been used since 1962), and then printed out with modern printers instead of tape glued on paper. But customers are still charged according to the length of the message, which is delivered within three hours. A basic NTT telegram up to 25 characters long can be sent for ¥440 ($4.30) when ordered online.Link to Original Source

sciencehabit writes: New evidence pushes back the origin of mummification in ancient Egypt by 1500 years. The scientists examined funeral wrappings excavated from pit graves in the earliest recorded cemeteries, dating to between 4500 and 3350 B.C.E., in the Badari region in Upper Egypt. Using biochemical analysis, the team identified complex embalming agents on the linen wrappings, pictured above, made from ingredients such as pine resin, gum, aromatic plant extract, and natural petroleum. The researchers say recipes using the same ingredients in similar proportions would eventually produce the more well-known mummies at the height of the Pharaonic period, some 3000 years later.Link to Original Source

onehitwonder writes: We've all witnessed robotics and other technologies eliminate scores of jobs in mostly unskilled professions over the past three decades: bank tellers, assembly line workers, cashiers, travel agents, and toll-takers, to name just a few. Now, with the fields of robotics, AI, and machine learning advancing so rapidly, those technologies are likely to begin eliminating and transforming the jobs of a variety of highly skilled and trained professionals in as few as five years, according to retired NASA astronaut—and one-time Survivor contestant—Dan Barry. Professionals likely to see robots and other technologies vaporize their jobs in the next decade include retail pharmacists, legal assistants, and anyone who's job fundamentally focuses on gathering and analyzing data. Barry, the founder of two robotics companies, is not all doom and gloom, however. He envisions a world where robots and AI not only relieve people of dangerous and boring jobs, but also ultimately lead to the creation of more creative and engaging work.Link to Original Source

Brandon Butler writes: In the annual battle of the buzzwords, the Internet of Things has won. Each year the research firm Gartner puts out a Hype Cycle of emerging technologies, a sort of report card for various trends and buzzwords. This year, IoT tops the list. On another note, somewhat surprising is that Gartner says the "cloud computing" is not just hype anymore, but becoming a mainstream technology.Link to Original Source

KentuckyFC writes: In 1931, after a 3- month visit to the US , Einstein penned a little known paper that attempted to show how his theory of general relativity could account for some of the latest scientific evidence. In particular, Einstein had met Edwin Hubble during his trip and so was aware of the latter's data indicating that the universe must be expanding. The resulting model is of a universe that expands and then contracts with a singularity at each end. In other words, Einstein was studying a universe that starts with a big bang and ends in a big crunch. What's extraordinary about the paper is that Einstein misspells Hubble's name throughout and makes a number of numerical errors in his calculations. That's probably because he wrote the paper in only 4 days, say the historians who have translated it into English for the time. This model was ultimately superseded by the Einstein-de Sitter model published the following year which improves on this in various ways and has since become the workhorse of modern cosmology.

Dega704 writes: When Syria's access to the internet was cut for two days back in 2012, it apparently wasn't the fault of dissenting "terrorists," as the Syrian government claimed: according to Wired, it was the fault of the US government. In a long profile of Edward Snowden published today, Wired writes what Snowden says is the truth about the internet outage. An elite hacking unit in the National Security Agency had reportedly been attempting to install malware on a central router within Syria — a feat that would have allowed the agency to access a good amount of the country's internet traffic. Instead, it ended up accidentally rendering the router unusable, causing Syria's internet connection to go dark.Link to Original Source

redletterdave writes: Thousands of fans quickly responded to a petition asking game developer Activision-Blizzard to insert Robin Williams into one of his favorite video games, 'World of Warcraft.' In less than 16 hours, organizer Jacob Holgate found 10,000+ fans to sign his petition, and the company responded in kind: “World of Warcraft” technical game designer Chadd Nervig responded to Holgate on Twitter: 'Yes. We're taking care of it.' Many have expressed a Robin Williams NPC to perform some of the late comedian's best jokes within the Worlds End Tavern, 'so that he may continue making us smile long after his passing.'Link to Original Source

The tomb, dating to around 300 BC, may have held the body of one of Alexander’s generals or a member of his family. It was found beneath a huge burial mound near the ancient site of Amphipolis in northern Greece. Antonis Samaras, Greece’s prime minister, visited the dig on Tuesday and described the discovery as “clearly extremely significant”.

A broad, five-yard wide road led up to the tomb, the entrance of which was flanked by two carved sphinxes. It was encircled by a 500 yard long marble outer wall. Experts believe a 16ft tall lion sculpture previously discovered nearby once stood on top of the tomb.

The excavations began in 2012, and by this month hope to identify who actually was buried there.Link to Original Source

msm1267 writes: If multipath TCP is the next big thing to bring resilience and efficiency to networking, then there are some serious security issues to address before it goes mainstream. An expert at next week's Black Hat conference is expected to explain how the TCP extension exposes leaves network security gear blind to traffic moving over multiple network streams. Today's IDS and IPS, for example, cannot correlate and re-assemble traffic as it's split over multiple paths. While such attacks are not entirely practical today, as multipath TCP becomes a fixture on popular networking gear and mobile devices, the risks will escalate.

“[Multipath TCP] solves big problems we have today in an elegant fashion,” said Catherine Pearce, security consultant and one of the presenters, along with Patrick Thomas. “You don’t have to replace hardware or software; it handles all that stuff behind the scenes. But security tools are naïve [to MPTCP], and make assumptions that are no longer valid that were valid in the past.”Link to Original Source

jones_supa writes: Nokia's future as a company focused on providing network solutions, rather than mobile phones, looks to be bright. The company made big profits in the second quarter of 2014 after selling its mobile devices unit — the cornerstone of Nokia's rise in the 1990s — to Microsoft. Meanwhile Nokia has been buying up other businesses such as the Chicago-based SAC Wireless. Now Nokia is acquiring part of Panasonic's network business in an effort to boost its presence in Japan. The deal announced Thursday will give the Finnish firm control of roughly one third of Japan's mobile network market.

SpaceGhost writes: KHOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, Texas reports that after Google detected an explicit image of a young girl in a users email they reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led to his arrest. Google did not respond to questions the reporter asked about this use of their technology, and the article does not make clear if it was a gmail account.Link to Original Source

dcblogs writes: An OpenVMS user group in France has posted an "open letter" to Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman urging her to reconsider HP's decision to begin pulling support for the operating system. The letter, written by OpenVMS consultant Gerard Calliet on behalf of user group HP-Interex France, explains the important role OpenVMS plays in running transportation systems, health services and even nuclear power plants in France. "These software products are the result of decades of precise programming, inscribed in precise coding imperative for such functional necessities," Calliet wrote. "A majority of them use functions specific to OpenVMS and still run on OpenVMS, as these custom features are hard to find elsewhere." The user group accuses HP of being unclear about its direction and creating confusion. In 2013, HP said it would not be validating OpenVMS on its latest Itanium-based systems.Link to Original Source

Zothecula writes: Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee have raised hopes for the possibility of developing of a probiotic to treat obesity and other chronic diseases. The team inhibited weight gain, insulin resistance and various other negative health effects of a high-fat diet in mice by modifying bacteria to produce a therapeutic compound in the gut.Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes: sel4 — the world's first operating-system kernel with an end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security enforcement has just been released as open source.sel4 is a general purpose mircokernel with an object capability security architecture. It was designed with security and reliability foremost in mind for use across the board from military control systems to medical devices.Link to Original Source